Archive for category Cloud

Although often overlooked, many standard email clients (not web-based) provide the ability to send S/MIME secure email. S/MIME has been around for quite some time, but you typically only see it used by perhaps government employees or maybe security-minded folks.

What is S/MIME anyway? It stands for Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.

Using client certificates, similar in concept to server certificates, a user sending an email can do two major things:

1) Digitally Sign an email – this marks the email as having come from the actual sender and will show the receiver if the mail has been altered after the sender signed and sent the email. Nifty!

2) Encrypt an email – once two users both have S/MIME configured and have exchanged messages (thus exchanging public keys), they can exchange encrypted messages back and forth. Note that this is different in concept than TLS level transport encryption between SMTP servers. Transport level encryption ensures that while in transit the message is not sent in the clear. S/MIME level message encryption ensures that the only one who can read the message is the intended recipient – who of course has the private key.

What’s really nice is that a user on an email system or client that doesn’t support S/MIME will still be able to read the signed (but not encrypted) messages. They simply see a smime.p7s file attachment with the message.

Cloud computing has some strong elements, but be mindful of your legal exposure. Having your business information stored on the cloud does not appear to afford the same legal protection as storing it on your office PC.

IT has a history of latching onto hot trends and buzzwords, and the latest is no different: cloud computing. Let me first say that it’s an exciting concept, but not necessarily a new one. While it has evolved over the years, it’s had a number of names that date back to the early days of IT and MIS. Here’s a few you might have heard in previous decades: application service provider, hosted service provider, network computing, time-sharing, multitenancy. All of these are variations on the same theme – someone else hosts the system or application, the client using the system pays for only the portion they use, without the overhead expense of maintaining the infrastructure.